


let me learn me (who lives beneath my skin)

by jedhaboy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Most of the siblings are very accepting, Mostly set before/after s1, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Beta Read, Only some parts during, Sibling Bonding, The few who aren't or are confused aren't doing it to be assholes, Trans Character, Trans Diego Hargreeves, Trans Male Character, Vague spoilers for show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 20:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedhaboy/pseuds/jedhaboy
Summary: Number Two snuffs out the candle of the girl that he was born as, the one his father raised and his siblings knew.  Then he lights a new one for Diego Hargreeves, the boy he always was.  Everything else comes next.(Or, five times Diego came out to his family, and the one time he didn't have to.)





	let me learn me (who lives beneath my skin)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cathartic fic for myself about trans!Diego and his family. At times there are references to Diego with female pronouns, and once with a dead name, though Diego doesn't allow himself to hear it. Nothing in this fic is meant to be triggering.
> 
> Not beta read. Written in a few intense bouts of energy, now to be popped up here.

> 001 // Klaus

Patrol observation is what Diego lives for. It’s not police work, not yet, but the feeling of a car beneath his body and the hum of sirens above his head acts as a balm against the paperwork and tangled web of laws that he can’t fully work through. Bad guy, bad thing, justice? Not the rules they always get to play by. But in a patrol car -- well it feels more like what Diego always expected. Officer Lewis tolerates him as much as she has to when the academy sends them out together.

_Arms crossed or in your lap, Hargreeves, you touch a single damn thing and I’ll write you up._

So on and so forth. If she didn’t have as much intent behind the words, Diego might’ve pushed the boundaries more than normal. Actually done the work he reads about instead of puttering around on the side, but he’s getting better. He’s trying, he fucking swears.

Until morning rolls around. Early patrol is for jaywalking and missing cats, breakfast on the move when coffee spills down your chin at every hard stop for a red light. It’s not for a call over the radio, _10-56_ , barely coherent individual presumably on drugs at the corner of Maple and--

Maple and--

And Diego’s brain turns numb to the sound of rushing blood in his ears the closer that they get. He’s not stupid, though being blessed with extremely good instincts makes him wish that he was sometimes. Not many people are stupid enough to get high enough that they pass out on a street corner when church going families are going to have to step over them. Most junkies like the private life or their own personal harem of other fucked up addicts, and god damn it, Diego is going to wring his skinny little neck. Small as ever in his mind’s eye -- and then in his actual vision as Lewis pulls the car to a halt beneath a shiny new NO PARKING sign.

He throws himself from the vehicle. Boots a loud crack on the ground, shadowed by the sharp cry of _Hargeeves!_ that chases after him. There’s little space between the prostrate body of his brother and the vehicle, but Diego jogs it anyway. Tries to find a modicum of relief in the jolting feeling with each step before it’s gone too fast, he’s here, towering over a pale and sweat slick Klaus. It’s like a child with a broken doll, Diego’s mind offers. One of those talking ones stuck on giggle-mode, the laughter leaving Klaus in rapid belts pockmarked by hiccupy breathing.

“What the fuck have you done?” Diego hears himself say, crouching down to roll his brother onto his side.

Closer now, he can see dried vomit clinging to Klaus’s lips. No mess around him -- he must have swallowed it, or thrown up earlier, both thoughts leaving nausea to rise in Diego’s belly now as he smacks Klaus on the back.

“Oh, I’m drifting, officer.” Klaus chokes out. Saliva falls from his mouth in a thickness and color Diego wishes he’d never seen. “Come back after my day dream is done.”

Footsteps begin to approach from behind them, and Klaus’s eyes fall wide open. A bloodshot, crusty mess that roll in their sockets before locking onto Diego’s face, and he’s not sure what hurts worse: the lack of recognition, or the sudden arrival of it.

“-----?”

Diego’s brain goes to static. What a trick to learn, what a good one, bringing with it the hot bubbling anger it always does even as some part of Diego resists. _How could he know,_ it asks him, _why would he?_

A heavy breath draws through his nose, and he thinks it’s the worst one he’s ever taken. “No.” Diego says. “Don’t call me that.”

Footsteps, approaching. Lewis’s voice grates in Diego’s ears as Klaus drops his head back to the concrete and laughs. “I thought you didn’t like your number,” he says, and then the rest is swallowed by shouting and sirens. 

 

It turns out that ‘I’m his brother’ gets you a lot of places. Out of trouble -- for now -- with the officer in charge of you, into an ambulance, front seat in a hospital room. Diego hates every second of it. Being apart from someone, he’s realizing, gives you the benefit of the doubt. You can pretend they’re doing other things, creating a life that suits them better than the one you know they’ve probably chosen.

Klaus, in his head, has never lost all of his problems. But he had made up for a lot of shortcomings since crawling out from under their father’s thumb. Reality’s made it her personal job to kick Diego’s teeth in; or maybe Klaus has. One and the same, really, when seeing the dead breaks most of the rules reality put in place.

He cracks his knuckles, one by one, and pretends not to notice when Klaus stirs awake. It makes the silence that builds much easier to handle. Hargeeves kids have never been more skilled at anything than forcing themselves not to acknowledge tension. Meals would’ve been impossible otherwise.

Sheets shift with a low groan from Klaus’ throat. “Jesus, my head…”

Diego swallows. “You’re lucky they didn’t have to pump your stomach.”

“But that sounds like a fun time.”

“Stop talking out your ass,” Diego snaps, staring up at his brother before he can stop himself, “there are better ways to get attention, bro.”

Slowly, a grin curls across Klaus’s face. Cheshire like, he thinks, a keen rush of helplessness through him at the sight.

“Oh, holy shit you… you really did it. And here I thought it was my beautiful imagination.”

He wants to ask.

He doesn’t.

“The hell are you talking about?”

“You sound hoarser than I do -- want some water?”

“Klaus,” he grinds out.

“Alright, alright, alright!” Klaus waves his arms, the words aimed at Diego even as his eyes flash over to the left. Another empty chair that he pretends holds a person. “I’m just saying, you look… well, more boyish. A lot more.”

Diego falls back into his seat. It’s a strange feeling, a terrible one just rich enough with relief to leave him feeling dizzy. _Boyish._ His brain feels swollen. _Boyish,_ and as wretched as they look, he can’t read anything but sincerity in Klaus’s eyes. And maybe that’s the most terribly wretched thing of all. Emotions have been stitched into Klaus’s wrists, always visible to any foolish onlooker.

Their father hated that about him; Diego remembers that more than most things. Not many of them were brave enough to show feelings around Reginald Hargreeves.

“I,” Diego makes himself say, hoarse voice grating even on his own ears, “am. I am. More boyish, that’s… the whole damn point.”

“I thought as much.” Klaus’ voice drifts dreamlike and rich from where he remains sprawled. Careful fingers play with his IV tubing. “You… were so angry… but you never liked your number either. Names were better than numbers.”

“Names are always better than numbers, bro.”

“And what should I call you, _bro?_ ”

That hot ball of anger feels eaten at. Like it’s rotting away in layers, and for a split second he feels like he can breathe easier than he ever has.

“Diego,” he says, voice edged with a shaking. “Diego.”

“I like that.” Klaus murmurs. Then, to the left, “oh he looks very handsome indeed.”

Diego’s chest burns.

> 002 // Luther

Dad’s death was pathetically plain, a fate fitting the old man’s choices as much as the old man himself, and yet a brittle edge of Diego’s heart feels empty if he considers it too long. It’s not as fun, he reasons to himself, that’s the only problem here. Nothing to be the first to realize, he cannot own the grand realization -- a problem so monolithic he doubts he’ll ever tackle it. It’s a very monstrous thing of him, the wanting, a hole he wants to fill up as much as ignore.

So he brandishes the coroner’s report just like one of his knives. Waves it, darts it in and out of Luther’s grip before letting go once the teasing forces his brother’s eyes away from his body. It makes him feel a little less cold. Shitty sort of equation though; one brother’s eyes and a feeling like dissection equals icy nausea in the back of Diego’s throat.

“Surprise surprise,” he says as he sits, “Dad’s death was… normal.”

There’s a dare here, one neither of them are going to put words to. _Doubt me,_ Diego thinks, _that’s the fun part._

He likes the normalcy that comes with Luther’s overbearing personality. It makes his own mouth taste like bitterness and salt, almost cleansing now that they’re adults without guardians to tear them away from each other. Baptism in your brother’s anger. Shit, doesn’t that just suit the holier-than-thou essence that spills out of Luther’s very presence? He’d spit to be told as much.

The words rise and die on Diego’s tongue. Just five seconds of silence and those eyes find their way back to him again. Luther looks at him with an intensity that leaves Diego breathless and his stomach twisting into knots. He stills himself. Locks his jaw, teeth to teeth, and drags his own eyes to burn right back into Luther’s skull.

Diego counts.

He counts past the five seconds. Past ten. Fifteen is when Luther stutters, a wordless noise from his throat twisting his mouth almost comically. Twenty, and he shuts up, and Diego almost tricks himself into thinking he can breathe easy.

But Luther continues to stare past when Diego stops counting, and only starts when his own hands tighten on the papers still held in them. Crackling, tearing, and Luther shakes his head.

“What,” he asks, “Happened to you?”

For all Diego’s planning and imagination, it still feels so terribly sudden. Like the wind has been knocked from him -- he can’t even gather his hands into fists -- and left him swaying at the end of their father’s bed. Carefully thought out retorts vanish into smoke. No smugness. No cutting back, giving as good as he gets. Just them in a room that still smells faintly of death.

“Something good.” Diego croaks out, looking nowhere but the thin, furrowing lines on Luther’s face. “And real. Not that you know much about either of those things, Number One.”

He forces himself to smirk no matter how brittle, how without feeling it must look, and turns on his heel.

“Hey--”

“You’re real good at being predictable.” Diego shouts over his shoulder.

The bedroom door slams in a heavy thudding; cutting through his words as much as the strings holding Diego together. 

> 003 // Allison

Diego stares at the wedding invitation for a week before he calls Allison. That’s a number he’s never used before -- hell, he’s never even owned it until the moment he saw each digit printed in soft gold lettering on the bottom of the invite. _Call with questions!_ Read in a chipper enough tone that he rolls his eyes anytime he’s unfortunate enough to read the damn thing again.

Which is often. But accidental, he doesn’t own many books right now.

‘No’ isn’t a question, and Diego’s pretty sure that Allison will lose her shit the second he says it in her very particular Allison way. But no matter how much he gripes and groans to Eudora, his neighbors, anyone who will listen, well. She’s still his sister. Marking something on a piece of paper and sending it back feels like more of a _fuck you_ than sits right with even him. And if she tries to rumor him? He’s probably fast enough to hang up before she gets the whole thing out.

A weekend feels right, so Diego waits until Saturday. She’ll be home then. Probably have her fiance to comfort her, and then the stress of being empathetic for his own damage is off of Diego’s shoulders. He enters her number into his phone, plastic cool and heavy in his hand. Inhales, and dials before he can tell himself not to.

It takes three rings before a familiar voice breaks through the phone, and Diego catches his own hand on the way to hanging up.

“Hello?”

“Uh,” he clears his throat, “this Allison?”

“She’s speaking.”

“Hey.” Diego says, because the rest of the words seem to have died somewhere in his chest.

“...Hey. I’m sorry, I don’t think I recognize your voice.” She says, and god, he can barely keep down the laughter that he knows will be hysterical.

“I’m-- it’s. Number Two.”

There’s a beat. Silence without whispering or any other sound but the mechanical humming of phone wires, and Diego can almost picture his sister on the other end. That one eyebrow up, twisted lips and scrunched nose look that she gives anything baffling. Maybe debating how to say he has the wrong number, sorry, used to be fan but I’m a different Allison!

Finally, she exhales, staticky and aching through his ears. “You sound really different, sorry. I would’ve-- well I know my sister’s voice.”

“Yeah. Yeah I uh, I’ve been sick, antibiotics and the whole nine yards.”

“Are you okay to talk?” Allison sounds worried, and Diego winces. “I can call back in a little bit and see how you’re doing then."

“Nah. I’m almost done with the pills, voice just stays fucked for awhile.”

“Yeah, I know how that is. I have some tea remedies, if you’d like?”

“I’ll be alright, sis, makes me sound tougher.” Diego pauses. “Actually, I was calling about the wedding. I got your invitation.”

“Oh! Yeah, I. I think they should’ve all shown up by now, I’m glad yours didn’t get lost.”

“You hear from the others?”

It’s a coward’s way out, a little bit, and he finds a small relief when Allison falls silent again. This time he can hear her breathing, at least. Like she doesn’t think she has to hold it this time. It comes off almost ragged, a sound Diego’s familiar with, makes him think of hospitals and lonely bedrooms. Of sorrowful things.

He knows the answer before she gives it. “Well, Luther’s… doing work. Pogo replied to his letting me know he couldn’t make it. Klaus said he can’t afford it.”

“Not surprising.” Diego answers, voice pitched lower as he bites back a sigh.

“No,” Allison agrees, a small laugh leaving her. “Vanya, I uhm.”

They both hesitate.

“I get it.”

“...So unless Five comes back or Ben’s ghost shows up, I think that’s everyone.”

Except him.

Two answers build in his throat all at once, and he tries to beg them for silence. A second to think, anything that could let down the sliver of hope in Allison’s voice gently--

“Good thing I’ll be there,” Diego says before he can stop himself, “at least one relative should show up to wreck the reception.” 

 

Diego nearly cancels.

He thinks about it when scrounging from all his hidden pockets for cash stowed away to afford a plane ticket. He thinks about it when pulling together a suit with the last bits of money that he has. (It fits well over his chest, recently flattened, but poorly over his pelvis and thighs). He thinks about it in the plane, in the taxi, sitting in his motel room that Diego purchased in a panic after Allison offered a room in her own home.

(And wasn’t that a panic? To show her early, to show her in a private place where she could shout and gnash her teeth and send him packing back to New York, another sibling dead to her for an entirely different matter).

It’s a selfishness, Diego knows. Selfishness because even that is better than cowardice, is better than fear, a want for drama sounds worse but feels far more better when he lets himself think about it.

Distantly, the night before with his mind running wild, Diego finds himself wishing for Patch in an instinctive way that he sort of hates himself for. What the hell would she know about this? A single child, a good family -- Patch was as much a stranger to Diego’s life as he was to hers. Except.

Well, she’d probably kick his ass into gear. Sharpen her tongue, _what kind of person would you be if you just left, Diego?_

An asshole.

_Yeah,_ he thinks into the empty, stale air around him, _but it’s done well for me so far._

_Has it?_ She asks, dry and cutting through the buzzing in Diego’s skull. _Is that the kind of asshole you want to be?_

 

With the next afternoon comes the wedding, and Diego finds he only remembers pieces. There is the guest list, the young man with boredom on his face that barely shifts when he scans for ‘Number Two’ and drags Diego down the aisle. Second row -- bride’s side. Stunning view of a vineyard’s fields folding out before him as Diego, like an echo, folds the program handed to him seconds before until it begins to fall apart.

He remembers Allison -- a vision in white and blush pink, sure, but Diego finds himself staring at the softness of her features. All the warmth there. Every small bit of anxiety rapidly vanishing into the waves of intense joy as she scrunches her nose to chase away rising tears. And for a moment so split Diego barely registers it, he feels his own sick nervousness swallowed up by the glow she gives off.

The ceremony is dizzying. What comes after, the meandering between reception and actual wedding is stale but clear enough as Diego strains to look casual, searching her out over the balcony railing. They’re taking photos -- enough busybodies talk about it for him to know that -- and he wonders for a moment if the plan was for her siblings to be in them. A family photo. A real one.

It’s ridiculous, it’s cheap, it’s-- well, it’s Allison enough that he downs the rest of his champagne and flags another glass over.

He can’t remember the reception well enough to say much even in the months after. If Luther asked he’d call it gaudy, grin with all of his teeth and spit _Hollywood_ until his brother’s nose curled. Truth of it all is, when has Allison ever made something that wasn’t beautiful? Gaudy, sure, but shit. She’s the only one to have a proper wardrobe out of the siblings Diego’s kept even half an eye on. So it’s nice. All of it is, the food fills him and the alcohol keeps him riding the edge of confidence enough that he doesn’t shrink in his seat when bride and groom part from their first dance to greet all of their guests.

Diego sees her coming, tracks her path with a shaking in his fingers as he turns the champagne flute from hand to hand. It’s sort of funny, she doesn’t recognize him until they’re nearly on top of each other. Skirts brushing against his knees as he stands, straightens his suit jacket under the slow drag of Allison’s eyes up his body.

Their eyes meet, and Diego forces his shoulders to fall away from where they’ve hunched up at his ears.

“You look beautiful, sis.” He says. The honesty is a sharp pain his chest when met with her confusion, her shock, no matter how expected.

“...I--”

“Not what you remembered? You can say it.”

Allison swallows. “It isn’t. But, I mean, you… it looks. You look good.”

He smiles, a small amount of teeth that most onlookers will glance by. “Not trying to steal your thunder. Figured I’d just come as me.”

For a moment, she simply nods. Reaching out to catch his wrist, curling her slender fingers around the bone, and Diego can feel her wedding ring pressing into his veins. It’s oddly pleasant. Or that’s the buzz that he’s been growing, the thrumming alcohol running underneath his skin.

“You could have told me.” Allison says, a small edge to her voice. “Is this why you didn’t stay with us?”

He’s drunk enough that honesty doesn’t feel as terrible as his long prepared white lies. “You were less likely to cause a scene here. It would’ve been easier to figure out you were pissed, get the hell out.”

“On your own terms.”

“...On my own terms, yeah.”

Allison digs her nails into his skin. “You’re such an asshole,” she says with a smile, and Diego wavers. “It’s like you think I’m an idiot, or blind.”

“Excuse me?”

“No one at that mansion was subtle, Two, you’re not the exception to that rule.”

Diego swallows. “That’s not what I’m calling myself, for the record.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Allison rolls her eyes.

A second later the nails slip out of his skin, leaving small crescent indents behind that he can’t help but stare at. They bring an uncomfortable sensation of soberness with them. Pain’s always been a bitch like that, and Diego thinks this must be a bit like how Klaus feels.

“So what is it,” she asks, “this new name?”

“Diego.” He says it easier this time -- as it’s easier with each attempt, the name feeling more right on his tongue.

“And you’re a he, right?”

“I-- yeah, that’s about right.”

It’s a lot for him to try and remember, the night of Allison’s wedding. Nerves and alcohol erase so much that sometimes, in the future, Diego finds himself regretful. Even when the divorce news passes down and he spits some bitterness that he can’t take back into her face. But here is the truth, the one thing that Diego remembers so clearly it comes to him in dreams some nights:

Allison slipped her hand into his and took him across the reception space, her skirts nearly catching under his shoes and her laughter sweet in his ears. There were bobby pins peeking out of her pin curls and bun. Under food and sweat, he could smell her perfume, and then the cologne of her groom when they came to a halt before him.  
He remembers, like it’s sacred now, how Allison sent him a smile. “Patrick,” she said with enough warmth to leave him dizzy, “this is my brother, Diego. He came to see us from New York.”

> 004 // Vanya

_Vanya,_

I’ve never wanted to hurt one of you more than I do right no---

 

_Vanya,_

 _What the fuck were you thinking? Did you rub your last two brain cells together and come up with that shitty book of yours?_

 

_Vanya,_

 _I hope you’re proud of yourself and all the bullshit you’ve caused. I hope you’re just thrilled with what you’ve done, how smart you probably think you seem. That book of yours is nothing more than whining from the one of us who dealt with next to nothing._

 

_Vanya,_

 _All it would’ve taken was a single phone call. We weren’t that hidden when the book came out, half a brain could’ve figured out where I’ve been hiding and called me up. Not for permission to publish. Fuck your book. But at least you could’ve figured out that you were writing about someone who doesn’t exist anymore. Inste--_

 

_Vanya,_

 _I’ve never been so fucking hurt by one of our siblings before. Those shitty comics have me frozen in time as someone I’m not, and then the second that I thought it was gone and done for you come out with your book. No dignity to refer to me as my number. No, it’s ---- this and --- that like a fucking parade of a dead person I thought I’d already buried. Did you even fucking think? Did you give a single shit about where we might’ve been when you published that? D--_

 

_Vanya,_

 _If you want revenge, say it to my fucking face, not to the world._

 

_Vanya,_

 _God damn it, I hate you so much. I hate your book. I hate what you’ve done to me. I hate that you’ve done this, it’s no one else’s fucking fault._

 

Diego counts to five, and then opens the door to her bedroom. Since the apocalypse was averted they’ve been changing the space. Vanya shifting into Ben’s room at his apparent behest, more space than the closet she grew up in, and she’s been reveling in it. Even under the startled widening of her eyes, the small curl of her fists, that enjoyment just lingers. Diego reels at the sight of her every time. Powerful. Small. The strong young woman who could’ve torn them apart -- and then the coward sibling he’s gnashed his teeth about for years.

He looks down at the papers in his hand. Crumpled. Nearly torn, some of them, only recently flattened by the hands of their most intrusive brother.

“Diego?” Vanya asks, small enough that he feels sick for a moment.

“I wrote.” He says, and stops, and closes his eyes. “I wrote so much to you, and I never finished it. Was gonna throw this shit away, but Five’s on my ass about letting you see them.”

With a flick of his wrist the papers fly across the room. Curving slightly, sure he won’t hit her, and they land in a messy pile on the foot of her bed. His own handwriting feels scalding when Diego looks at them, distance be damned. Some small shard of him wants to yank them back. And the rest of him --

It’s a weight taken. Flesh stripped from the bones and leaving them with a new sense of freedom. He forces himself to meet Vanya’s large eyes.

“You need to understand what you did to me,” Diego says, “even if a lot of what you wrote was… justified, that shit you did when you wrote about me wasn’t okay.”

“I-- you know I didn’t know, don’t you?”

She always sounds small when they’re angry. As if for a second, Vanya can’t remember that she could cut them into pieces with a snap of her head. It makes him even more furious than it should.

“I know.” Shaking his head, Diego adds, “but that doesn’t change how much it fucking hurt. My name is Diego, even when Mom called me something else I was always _Diego,_ okay? And I need you to get what you did before I can forgive you.”

 

(He thinks, he’ll wait as long as it takes, because it will certainly take forever. What he does not plan for is two mornings to pass before Vanya comes to him, eyes red rimmed and her body frail as she sits besides him at the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says, a hoarseness to her voice. “For a little bit there I thought you were just… saying what Five said you should. I didn’t realize how…”

Diego doesn’t need time to think about it now. Setting his fork down, he wipes his hands on his jeans and then holds them open. “Come here.”

Folding together -- it isn’t simple. They don’t know quite how to do this, how to make their bodies fit, and chins knock into foreheads before they finally settle into a stillness. Vanya shakes, and shakes, and Diego wonders that he’s not the one falling apart. He half expected it. Tears. Anger. Maybe a blow or two into the walls, far enough that she wouldn’t lash out in response.

Instead he finds himself stroking a hand down her back. Tugging the ends of her hair just gently enough to make her snort through her tears, a welcome yet unwanted humor at the occasional tease.

“I forgive you.” Diego says, letting his own surprise rush through him. “And those were from Five, but I actually mean them.”

Vanya laughs. Chokes. “Yeah, figures.”

“We’re not okay yet.” He speaks into the air as he presses his chin into the top of her head.

“Okay.” She nods against his neck. “I’ll work on it.”

“We’ll work on it.”

“Okay.”)

> 005 // Ben

By the time the sun is halfway through her rising, Diego’s knees have begun to go numb. His jeans are soaked, the constant kiss of dew from grass staining the back of his thighs in what he knows will be a shockingly off green color. He’d care if they were his -- sure, his roommate will throw a fit, but by then Diego won’t leave any evidence he’s the one who took them. Jeans, yeah. But nicer than any clothes he owns.

And before a grave, no matter how cool and grey, nice matters to him.

Sitting before Ben’s grave -- Ben’s proper grave, the one for the body after their father declared it dangerous enough to keep off of his property -- makes Diego feel a little stupid for that thought now. Ben would make fun of him. _(What would I care if you had a button down or a crop top on, Two? I’m dead!)_

With Klaus high, it’s all he can do to imagine what his brother would sound like. The cadence feels a little off. Maybe a few words would be switched with others, but shit. Diego’s trying. He never took the time to memorize how Ben spoke when he was living, and now he’s left with nothing but an ever present sensation. Feels like what he imagines a ghost would feel like. All warmth. All gentleness.

Both his imagination and ghosts lack structure. Figures.

“I sort of thought you’d appear if I stayed here long enough.” Diego says to the grave. “So I could say this to your face, and it would feel more real to me than… well. It feels like I’m cheating. You’re not alive. You’re just a shitty slab of granite.”

The grave remains silent, still despite all soft whistling wind that bites at Diego’s cheeks. He picks at the grass near his kneecap. Wetness sticks each blade to his fingertips, tickling the calluses that have never gone away since blossoming when he first held a knife.

Things were different then.

Maybe Ben hasn’t made himself known because the person on his grave is anything but recognizable.

“Look, even if you were alive I’d probably tell you first.” Diego says, jaw working and cracking with every syllable. “But you’re dead, and that makes it easier. Because. See--”

His voice breaks. Rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand, Diego tries to shake the rage in his belly away.

“I’m not a girl, Ben. I don’t even know if I ever was, other than being… born like that. But I didn’t feel it, and I still don’t, so. So I’m a boy. And I’ve been--” He laughs, hoarse, “calling myself Diego. Kind of like what mom chose, right?”

Somewhere far above him, a bird sings as it passes through the air. Close enough to encouragement, Diego thinks. Better than the others would ever give him.

“It’s what feels right. Okay? So don’t talk shit about me in the… afterlife or whatever. I’m still. I’m still me.”

Still, the grave responds as it can only respond, with the letters engraved upon it. Same as those beneath the statue. Just with a name, with dates above. And somehow Diego finds he feels better despite it all. A secret between himself and the dead is a secret that he doesn’t have to worry about being shared.

Standing on unsteady legs, Diego looks down at his brother’s grave, and sighs until his chest feels lighter.

“Thanks,” he says, “for listening.” 

 

Some years later, Diego hasn’t forgotten. He can’t let himself forget, and it brings him to stillness when Klaus leans himself backwards over the couch and grabs at his wrist.

“Ben says you’re welcome,” Klaus says in that sleepy voice of his.

Diego swallows. “What?”

“He says, ‘It is like what mom chose, but it’s more you.’ Yes, okay, Jesus. And that ‘I was there the whole time, it’s kind of funny how long you waited.’”

Klaus scrunches his nose as he sits up halfway. A frown cast into the empty air besides him, a near silent argument taken up. Neither of them truly realize that he still has a grip on Diego. Or --

In some ways, they don’t notice because it isn’t Klaus. It’s another hand, another pressure, a softness and slenderness that Diego had all but forgotten. He tries to remember how to breathe. Lets the sensation seep into him, and lingers for as long as he can.

> +001 // Five

Those first two weeks after the apocalypse is averted are filled with an uncomfortable stillness -- a tension from the nothing that says all of them, in some way, are waiting for a reset to push the end times back into motion. Trying to return to their normal habits, their preset schedules feels almost awkward now. So they find themselves rotating into tighter circles. Attending family dinners with next to no conversation, aborted requests for passed condiments between cautious glances. Turns out the end of the world shows a lot of people’s true colors. Something’s dissolved between a lot of them, and something else has begun to grow in it’s place.

Diego hates it. Not new -- Diego hates many things, all of them like an itch beneath his skin, and change he has no control over tends to hang upon the top of that list. As much as he can, he keeps his head down. Avoids his siblings for the most part.

Except there’s Five. The asshole can’t give Diego a break, asking odd questions that feel a little too open ended for him to find comfort in. Then scrounging up the letters to Vanya, gesturing with them as they talked. Made him feel dizzy; broke him down easier to Five’s carefully phrased demand. And now--

Five kicks his bedroom door shut behind him, and tosses a glass across the room. Before he can convince himself to ignore the brat, Diego catches it and begins to turn it over. The crystal is cool against his fingertips. Carved angles -- is that the right word, he wonders, carved? -- pushing into his palm as he listens to Five stalk closer. Sit. Christ, the bed barely sinks beneath Five’s weight, he’s so small. A straw boy containing far too many multitudes.

He sounds drunk without a single drop in him, Diego thinks, what a bad sign.

“Here.” Five doesn’t give him much time to steady the glass before pouring liquor into it. Golden, turning darker. A beautiful color even in the dimmed lights of Diego’s room.

“Thanks.”

“Mm. Celebration.”

It’s dry, almost bitter sounding, and Diego takes a drink before his mouth can speed ahead of him.

After a long moment, he chuckles. “That’s one way to think of it. We’re definitely celebrating at nine pm in my old childhood bedroom.”

“And what word would you use?”

“We’re lucky sons of bitches, realizing just how lucky we are.”

Five grins down at his glass. It’s halfway emptied -- reflecting his features back at him in blurred yet starking quality. With how much it fucks with Diego to see his brother perfectly thirteen, how much he hates to be comforted by it, he finds himself wondering how it needles at Five. That’s the most circular thing between them. Being bothered by their own selves in one way or another.

Shaking his head, he lets the flare of alcohol run down his throat. Forces himself not to wince at the burn. “Don’t really feel lucky, personally. Do you, bro?”

“Luck…” Five falls into a brief silence. Clears his throat. “I don’t believe in luck, Diego. Just a lot of coincidences and beating fate into submission.”

“Diego.” He says without thinking, without even trying to stop himself.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. And the others knew it, but what about you? How’d you know that straight up -- coincidence, or a shit ton of fate?”

Five glances over at him, eyes dark and hooded. “You have a very poor opinion of me.”

The liquor sits heavy in Diego’s belly. Another acid, another form of bile that he’s going to spit up later. It doesn’t keep him from drinking more. Avoiding his brother’s eyes, how fucking haunted they look when he ever so barely glances over. Now some of that is because of him. Another issue started.

Figures. Diego’s never been accused of being able to mind his own business.

“If we died the first time,” he blurts out, “then how the hell did you know it was me? How’d you figure out my name? Not like I had that shit engraved in stone, bro, I must’ve looked…”

“Like an absolute stranger?”

Diego swallows. Nods.

“You did.” Five answers, shrugging his small shoulders. “I had to guess once I saw your tattoo -- it was too perfect to be one from a fan. Not that any of our siblings would’ve allowed a fan to try and help them fight against.”

He cuts himself off, smiling at the bare wall across from them. Saying her name in harmony with the event, as the why of it, is something that none of them have gotten better at. Not even Five is free of the crawling weight of their sister’s involvement. And he, Diego thinks, is the one who really fixed her.

“So I figured, there’s only one person in our family who could fit the bill. So I relearned your pronouns.”

“Simple as that.” Diego’s voice feels thin, hoarse in his throat. “What did you call me?”

“Two.”

Despite himself, he chokes on a laugh. Aborted but loud enough to make Five twitch, eyes widening before he lets himself relax.

“I thought you’d appreciate the honesty.” Five says, lips curling downwards.

“I do -- why the hell wouldn’t I? Doesn’t mean it’s not. Well, it’s fucking funny.”

“Is it?”

“Considering I did the same.”

“You-- ah.” He chuckles now -- a too adult sound for his body. “Well, at least our father gave us good temporary names. If I was kinder, I’d say it was just in case we needed to change ourselves.”

Diego peers into his glass. Makes a small sound. “We’re not kind.”

“No, we’re not. Which makes this conversation more than a little bit awkward.”

With a twist of his wrists, Five vanishes. The bed rises ever so slightly as he reappears, bottle snatched from a desk too small for Diego’s height now, comical when holding whiskey besides old school work and small pencils.

“Wait--” Diego speaks, winces when he hears himself. A desperation that he can’t take back filling the air between them and making him grateful for how Five keeps himself turned away.

“Your name, right?” Five asks.

“Still haven’t explained it.” He keeps his voice low. “Gender. Sure. Fine. But you never asked, you never even fucking made a comment--”

“What would I say, Diego?”

“Anything! Everyone else did, shit, even Klaus couldn’t fucking believe it. And then here you are, like you-- like this is the only me you know.”

“I’m not like everyone else,” Five turns to face him now, teeth barely glinting beneath his curled lips, “and I don’t give a damn about what Klaus could or couldn’t fit in his braincells. Here’s what I did. I listened, I watched, and I noticed that no one called you anything but Diego.”

He stops. Drinks deeply, heavily from his glass, a soft burp breaking from his throat before he lowers it.

“And do you know what I really saw? I saw that you looked relieved every single time they said it. Relieved. ...And scared. Which I’ll admit, confused me until I realized you were so worried they’d be saying something else. You still do it,” Five adds, stepping closer, “when I say your name now. Diego.”

“Hey--”

“Diego.”

His throat is tight, his head buzzing as he holds up a hand. “Five, cut the shi--”

“Diego,” Five comes to a halt besides him, “I don’t know what our siblings did or didn’t do. And if you’re wondering if I slip up sometimes, it’s only in my head, and I berate myself for it. None of that means you need to think that being respected by me -- by anyone -- is a trick. Not in this household, shitty as it is. Do you get it?”

Hands shaking, Diego sets his glass down on the floor and brings both palms to his face. He breathes in hard, tries to count down, but there’s nothing to stop tears from falling. Leaving tacky, salt slick streaks down his cheeks that feels anything but sudden. It’s necessary. It’s fucking overdue, no matter how much Diego hates the wretching of his chest and the small, broken sounds that he can’t swallow back.

A small hand presses against his spine for a moment. Long enough to draw another sob out of Diego’s chest.

“I won’t allow it,” Five says, soft enough that he’s nearly drowned out. “We’re all adults here; we have to grow up.”

He says it like gospel, like words directly from the god who turned their brother away. Like every ounce of kindness Five contains within him has been given to those few words.  
And Diego lets himself break.


End file.
